This year-to-year commitment would include writing blog posts for Covering Health, summarizing key issues, webcasting short interviews with top experts, asking other journalists to write about their work and contribute tip sheets, identifying good story examples and important dates for journalists. This writer would work with AHCJ's web editor to encourage reader interaction through social media and should be willing to share knowledge at AHCJ events. The core topic leader also would be expected to coordinate with the other core topic leaders when their topics overlap.

The writer must be experienced in writing about health for web publications, linking to sources and other materials, editing and assigning work to other journalists. Additional multimedia experience is a plus, as is an existing network of journalists and experts in the health IT field.

This freelance work will pay up to $12,000 a year.

Position details

AHCJ believes there is a core set of topics that today’s health journalists need to master to cover the beat well and has launched several core topic areas toward that effort. These "learning centers" are expertise areas we feel are essential to reporting on health or health care.

Each specialty topic page includes glossaries, key concepts, reporting tip sheets, blog items, first-person stories by fellow journalists, videos, data and more. The topic home page serves as a launch pad to more resources, on healthjournalism.org and elsewhere.

The health IT core topic focuses on the wide range of uses, from government policy to clinical settings to medical education to consumer usage. Some specific topics include:

Electronic health records

Meaningful use

Personal health records

Interoperability

Telemedicine

Health informatics

Apps and wearables

Disease tracking

Artificial intelligence

Machine learning

The core topic leader will:

write a collection of concise background briefs on key concepts related to the topic

contribute blog posts at least once a week to AHCJ's blog, Covering Health, that point out good journalistic work being done on the topic, resources or other things that would help reporters advance their coverage

Organize and moderate webcasts with experts and journalists to educate reporters on emerging issues

Review suggestions from members and determine which to add to our resources

Arrange for occasional audio or video interviews with an expert on the topic or a fellow journalist

Assign first-person stories/tip sheets to be written by other journalists ("how I covered this aspect of a story") designed to help reporters work on similar or related stories

Pinpoint or obtain related datasets that will allow reporters to deepen their stories and write summaries of them, suggesting best uses and possible stories

Assist in setting up panels and finding speakers for AHCJ training events.

To Apply

Please take a careful look at the core topic and tell us what kinds of things you would contribute to the site on the topic of health IT. Send an email with suggestions on what you could contribute, tell us about your applicable experience and attach a résumé with story links to pia@healthjournalism.org by Dec. 5, with “Health IT topic leader” in the subject line. Applications can be addressed to the "Topic Leader Review Committee." Notes of inquiry can be sent to the same address.